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spotty brood.....

I have a couple of hives with spotty brood. It doesn’t look like pms. Also…not foulbrood….either a or e. All of the larvae look pearl white. The queen appears to return to frames and fill in the empties, so there is a mix of brood everywhere….eggs to emerging brood. The hives seem healthy with big populations and have been making swarm cells.
I guess it could be inbred or failing queens but the colonies seem to be doing so well.
I took a five frame split from one today and added a newly mated ‘store bought’ queen. I’m going to be interested to see how her brood looks…..in case it is some sort of comb laden plague or some sort of nurse bee parasite.

The first picture is the frame with bees

The frame with bees shaken off

A closer image.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. - Emerson

Re: spotty brood.....

Dan, are all the frames like this? Could just be a timing issue. I would move that frame to the outer edge of the brood nest, like position 2 or 9 and give the queen a drawn but totally empty comb. See if she lays it solid. I think she is running out of room and is laying in any empty cell she can find, thus the differing ages all over the same frame.

Thankfully, the bees are smarter than I am. They are doing well, in spite of my efforts to help them.

Re: spotty brood.....

Originally Posted by JWPalmer

Dan, are all the frames like this? Could just be a timing issue.

It crossed my mind that this might be a continuation of an early spring problem….maybe a lack of pollen. Not the case now though. But, if the nurse bees weren’t able to keep all of the brood viable early on then the pattern might have persisted. All of the brood frames are spotty though. When I find a patch of newly hatched eggs, it is apparent that she is laying in every cell.
Also, I don’t see any evidence of them uncapping and removing any pupae. So if they are still removing any….they seem to be removing larvae. I also, don’t see any evidence of this going on.
I could give them a few frames of empty comb, I suppose, as you suggested. I’ll have to sleep on it.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. - Emerson

Re: spotty brood.....

Had a similar situation last year at my workplace, but in late may/early June. 1 hive had spotty brood on 7-8 frames, but no visible disease or damage to bees or brood. I was suspecting that it was a nutrition/food issues and decided to shake the bees into a different hive with drawn comb and fed them sugar water and MegaBee. 10 days after being shaken the brood pattern looked normal and the colony bounced back. First picture shows colony pre shake and 2nd is 10 days after being shaken. I threw away all of the spotty brood frames.